Honoring a deserving Cuban supporter-in-Exile of Participative Democracy:
Luis A. Baralt Mederos
With all the outward trappings and the inner lining of his solid democratic beliefs, a Cuban-born-and-raised U.S. citizen, highly knowledgeable in History and Literature –in whose writings he has proven his mettle as an author of note and a political analyst-, Luis Baralt has earned through his lifetime all the qualifications to be deemed an elder statesman, well-heeled in the humanistic philosophy of which Amintore Fanfani and Jacques Maritain were respectively the political and intellectual bulwarks. Baralt’s achievements stand out all the more in the light of his reposed demeanor, fluency in English and Spanish resulting from a rich academic upbringing and the discharge of management positions in business and the Arts, as well as his well-traveled and bountiful experience in sundry diplomatic posts (pursuant to the degree in Public and Administrative Law obtained at the Diplomatic School of the Republic of Cuba –prior to the Communist takeover of the country-). His political heart always beating as the original exile from his Cuban homeland he has never ceased to be, his achievements throughout half-a-century in various countries (the U.S., the Netherlands, Mexico, Germany, and Spain) have been scored not only at the prow of several worldwide companies (first, as a top-flight executive for Reader’s Digest and the Encyclopaedia Britannica –for approximately twenty years-; subsequently, as marketing director for a Dutch publishing house; and finally, as the marketing head of a multinational chemical company), but also as a writer (of books such as “The Up-rooting”, a memoir of exile feelings, published in Spain in 1984, and “Turkey”, an introduction to that country, purposefully written for young English readers and published in 1988), a lecturer for the U.S Council on Foreign Relations –following his resignation as Cuba’s Ambassador to Canada as well as from the Cuban Foreign Service, and march into exile, on grounds of principle, in the wake of the regime’s about-face towards totalitarianism-, and as a columnist for various newspapers and Internet sites, always in defense of the freedoms enacted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and against the persons in power who defile themselves as dictators and oppressors, whether in the formerly called “Socialist camp” –the late Soviet bloc- or anywhere such regimes hold sway, whether in Latin America, the Far East, Southeast Asia or the Islamist outgrowths in Africa and the Middle East. Baralt has always thrown into the fold the weight of his personality and the strength of his pen, in the effort to spread the ideals of participative democracy and, as a corollary, to push back the plight of intolerance and persecution. In that pursuit, in the course of his close to thirty years of residence in Spain, he has co-founded, and has been for quite some time now, the Chairman of the Association for Democracy in Cuba, incorporated under Spanish laws and designed to promote the observance of human rights and their respect, singularly in Cuba, where freedoms have been held in abeyance since the Communist takeover fifty years ago.
Hailing from the municipality of Marianao –Havana’s sister city to the West of the Cuban capital-, Luis Baralt remains, from the vantage point of his Spanish home, very much an active participant in literary and artistic activities and performances, and no less in the political world, particularly in liaison with many other organizations committed to the cause of Freedom worldwide, with a special bent for the prompt restoration of a democratic regime in his native Cuba.
Today, August 11, 2011, he is turning 84 years of age, in the splendidly energetic pursuit of a never dimming engagement for the liberty and dignity of mankind everywhere, which he has been conducting all of his adult life.
Topic Author
